Explosive
Testimony: Revelations about the
Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral
Histories

By Professor
David Ray Griffin

“[T]here was just an
explosion [in the south tower].
It seemed like on television
[when] they blow up these
buildings. It seemed like it was
going all the way around like a
belt, all these
explosions.”--Firefighter
Richard Banaciski

“I saw a flash flash flash
[at] the lower level of the
building. You know like when
they demolish a
building?”--Assistant Fire
Commissioner Stephen Gregory

“[I]t was [like a]
professional demolition where
they set the charges on certain
floors and then you hear 'Pop,
pop, pop, pop, pop'."--Paramedic
Daniel Rivera

The above quotations come
from a collection of 9/11 oral
histories that, although
recorded by the Fire Department
of New York (FDNY) at the end of
2001, were publicly released
only on August 12, 2005. Prior
to that date, very few Americans
knew the content of these
accounts or even the fact that
they existed.

Why have we not known about
them until recently? Part of the
answer is that the city of New
York would not release them
until it was forced to do so.
Early in 2002, the New York
Times requested copies
under the freedom of information
act, but Mayor Michael
Bloomberg’s administration
refused. So the Times,
joined by several families of
9/11 victims, filed suit. After
a long process, the city was
finally ordered by the New York
Court of Appeals to release the
records (with some exceptions
and redactions allowed).
Included were oral histories, in
interview form, provided by 503
firefighters and medical
workers.1 (Emergency
Medical Services had become a
division within the Fire
Department.2) The
Times then made these oral
histories publicly available.3

Once the content of these
testimonies is examined, it is
easy to see why persons
concerned to protect the
official story about 9/11 would
try to keep them hidden. By
suggesting that explosions were
occurring in the World Trade
Center’s Twin Towers, they pose
a challenge to the official
account of 9/11, according to
which the towers were caused to
collapse solely by the impact of
the airplanes and the resulting
fires.

In any case, now that the
oral histories have finally been
released, it is time for
Americans and the world in
general to see what these brave
men and women reported about
that fateful day. If this
information forces a
reevaluation of the official
story about 9/11, better now
than later.

That said, it must be added
that although these oral
histories are of great
significance, they do not
contain the first reports of
explosions in the Twin Towers.
Such reports---from
firefighters, reporters, and
people who had worked in the
towers---started becoming
available right after 9/11.

These reports, however, were
not widely publicized by the
mainstream press and, as a
result, have for the most part
been known only within the “9/11
truth movement,” which has
focused on evidence that seems
inconsistent with the official
story.

I will begin by summarizing
some of those previously
available reports. Readers will
then be able to see that
although in some respects the
newly released oral histories
simply add reinforcement, they
also are revelatory documents:
Some of the testimonies are
quite stunning, even to people
familiar with the earlier
reports; and there are now so
many testimonies that even the
most skeptical reader is likely
to find the cumulative effect
impressive.

Previously Available Testimony Suggestive of
Explosions in the Twin Towers

The day after 9/11, a story
in the Los Angeles Times,
referring to the south tower,
said: “There were reports of an
explosion right before the tower
fell, then a strange sucking
sound, and finally the sound of
floors collapsing."4

A story in the Guardian
said that “police and fire
officials were carrying out the
first wave of evacuations when
the first of the World Trade
Centre towers collapsed. Some
eyewitnesses reported hearing
another explosion just before
the structure crumbled. Police
said that it looked almost like
a ‘planned implosion.’"5

“Planned implosion” is
another term for controlled
demolition, in which
explosives are placed at crucial
places throughout a building so
that, when set off in the proper
order, they will cause the
building to come down in the
desired way. When it is close to
other buildings, the desired way
will be straight down into, or
at least close to, the
building’s footprint, so that it
does not damage the surrounding
buildings. This type of
controlled demolition is called
an “implosion.” To induce an
implosion in steel-frame
buildings, the explosives must
be set so as to break the steel
columns. Each of the Twin Towers
had 47 massive steel columns in
its core and 236 steel columns
around the periphery.

To return now to testimonies
about explosions: There were
many reports about an explosion
in the basement of the north
tower. For example, janitor
William Rodriguez reported that
he and others felt an explosion
below the first sub-level office
at 9 AM, after which co-worker
Felipe David, who had been in
front of a nearby freight
elevator, came into the office
with severe burns on his face
and arms yelling "explosion!
explosion! explosion!"6

Rodriguez’s account has been
corroborated by Josť Sanchez,
who was in the workshop on the
fourth sub-level. Sanchez said
that he and a co-worker heard a
big blast that “sounded like a
bomb,” after which “a huge ball
of fire went through the freight
elevator.”7

Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who
was working in the sixth
sub-basement of the north tower,
said that after an explosion he
and a co-worker went up to the C
level, where there was a small
machine shop. “There was nothing
there but rubble,” said
Pecoraro. “We're talking about a
50 ton hydraulic press--gone!”
They then went to the parking
garage, but found that it was
also gone. Then on the B level,
they found that a
steel-and-concrete fire door,
which weighed about 300 pounds,
was wrinkled up "like a piece of
aluminum foil." Having seen
similar things after the
terrorist attack in 1993,
Pecoraro was convinced that a
bomb had gone off.8

Given these testimonies to
explosions in the basement
levels of the towers, it is
interesting that Mark Loizeaux,
head of Controlled Demolition,
Inc., has been quoted as saying:
“If I were to bring the towers
down, I would put explosives in
the basement to get the weight
of the building to help collapse
the structure.”9

Multiple Explosions

Some of the testimonies
suggested that more than one
explosion occurred in one tower
or the other. FDNY Captain
Dennis Tardio, speaking of the
south tower, said: "I hear an
explosion and I look up. It is
as if the building is being
imploded, from the top floor
down, one after another,
boom, boom, boom."10

In June of 2002, NBC
television played segments from
tapes recorded on 9/11. One
segment contained the following
exchange, which involved
firefighters in the south tower:

Firefighter Louie Cacchioli,
after entering the north tower
lobby and seeing elevator doors
completely blown out and people
being hit with debris, asked
himself, “how could this be
happening so quickly if a plane
hit way above?” After he reached
the 24th floor, he and another
fireman “heard this huge
explosion that sounded like a
bomb [and] knocked off the
lights and stalled the
elevator.” After they pried
themselves out of the elevator,
“another huge explosion like the
first one hits. This one hits
about two minutes later . . .
[and] I’m thinking, ‘Oh. My God,
these bastards put bombs in here
like they did in 1993!’”12

Multiple explosions were also
reported by Teresa Veliz, who
worked for a software
development company in the north
tower. She was on the 47th
floor, she reported, when
suddenly “the whole building
shook. . . . [Shortly
thereafter] the building shook
again, this time even more
violently." Then, while Veliz
was making her way downstairs
and outside: “There were
explosions going off everywhere.
I was convinced that there were
bombs planted all over the place
and someone was sitting at a
control panel pushing detonator
buttons. . . . There was another
explosion. And another. I didn't
know where to run."13

Steve Evans, a New York-based
correspondent for the BBC, said:
“I was at the base of the second
tower . . . that was hit. . . .
There was an explosion. . . .
The base of the building shook.
. . . [T]hen there was a series
of explosions.”14

Sue Keane, an officer in the
New Jersey Fire Police
Department who was previously a
sergeant in the U.S. Army, said
in her account of the onset of
the collapse of the south tower:
“[I]t sounded like bombs going
off. That's when the explosions
happened. . . . I knew something
was going to happen. . . . It
started to get dark, then all of
a sudden there was this massive
explosion.” Then, discussing her
experiences during the collapse
of the north tower, she said:
“[There was] another explosion.
That sent me and the two
firefighters down the stairs. .
. . I can't tell you how many
times I got banged around. Each
one of those explosions picked
me up and threw me. . . . There
was another explosion, and I got
thrown with two firefighters out
onto the street.”15

Wall Street Journal
reporter John Bussey, describing
his observation of the collapse
of the south tower from the
ninth floor of the WSJ office
building, said: “I . . . looked
up out of the office window to
see what seemed like perfectly
synchronized explosions coming
from each floor. . . . One after
the other, from top to bottom,
with a fraction of a second
between, the floors blew to
pieces.”16

Another Wall Street
Journal reporter said that
after seeing what appeared to be
“individual floors, one after
the other exploding outward,” he
thought: “‘My God, they’re going
to bring the building down.’ And
they, whoever they are, HAD SET
CHARGES. . . . I saw the
explosions.”17

A similar perception was
reported by Beth Fertig of WNYC
Radio, who said: “It just
descended like a timed
explosion—like when they are
deliberately bringing a building
down. . . . It was coming down
so perfectly that in one part of
my brain I was thinking, 'They
got everyone out, and they're
bringing the building down
because they have to.'”18

A more graphic testimony to
this perception was provided on
the film made by the Naudet
brothers. In a clip from that
film, one can watch two firemen
describing their experiences to
other firemen.

Fireman 1: “We
made it outside, we made it
about a block . . . .”

Fireman 2: “We
made it at least two blocks
and we started running.” He
makes explosive sounds and
then uses a chopping hand
motion to emphasize his next
point: “Floor by floor it
started popping out . . . .”

Fireman 1: “It
was as if they had
detonated--as if they were
planning to take down a
building, boom boom boom
boom boom . . . .”

Fireman 2: “All
the way down. I was watching
it and running. And then you
just saw this cloud of shit
chasing you down.”19

As these illustrations show,
quite impressive testimony to
the occurrence of explosions in
the Twin Towers existed even
prior to the release of the oral
histories. As we will see,
however, these oral histories
have made the testimony much
more impressive, qualitatively
as well as quantitatively. The
cumulative testimony now points
even more clearly than before
not simply to explosions but to
controlled demolition.

Testimonies in the Oral Histories Suggestive of
Controlled Demolition

Several FDNY members reported
that they heard an explosion
just before the south tower
collapsed. For example,
Battalion Chief John Sudnik said
that while he and others were
working at the command post, “we
heard a loud explosion or what
sounded like a loud explosion
and looked up and I saw tower
two start coming down.”20

Firefighter Timothy Julian
said: “First I thought it was an
explosion. I thought maybe there
was a bomb on the plane, but
delayed type of thing, you know
secondary device. . . . I just
heard like an explosion and then
a cracking type of noise, and
then it sounded like a freight
train, rumbling and picking up
speed, and I remember I looked
up, and I saw it coming down.”21

Emergency medical technician
Michael Ober said: “[W]e heard a
rumble, some twisting metal, we
looked up in the air, and . . .
it looked to me just like an
explosion. It didn’t look like
the building was coming down, it
looked like just one floor had
blown completely outside of it.
. . . I didn’t think they were
coming down. I just froze and
stood there looking at it.”22
Ober’s testimony suggests that
he heard and saw the explosion
before he saw any sign that the
building was coming down.

This point is made even more
clearly by Chief Frank Cruthers,
who said: “There was what
appeared to be at first an
explosion. It appeared at the
very top, simultaneously from
all four sides, materials shot
out horizontally. And then there
seemed to be a momentary delay
before you could see the
beginning of the collapse."23

These statements by Ober and
Cruthers, indicating that there
was a delay between the
explosion and the beginning of
the collapse, suggest that the
sounds and the horizontal
ejection of materials could not
be attributed simply to the
onset of the collapse.

Shaking Ground before the
Collapse

As we saw earlier, some
people in the towers reported
that there were powerful
explosions in the basements.
Such explosions would likely
have caused the ground to shake.
Such shaking was reported by
medical technician Lonnie Penn,
who said that just before the
collapse of the south tower: “I
felt the ground shake, I turned
around and ran for my life. I
made it as far as the Financial
Center when the collapse
happened.”24

According to the official
account, the vibrations that
people felt were produced by
material from the collapsing
towers hitting the ground.
Penn’s account, however,
indicates that the shaking must
have occurred several seconds
before the collapse.

Shaking prior to the collapse
of the north tower was described
by fire patrolman Paul Curran.
He was standing near it, he
said, when “all of a sudden the
ground just started shaking. It
felt like a train was running
under my feet. . . . The next
thing we know, we look up and
the tower is collapsing.”25

Lieutenant Bradley Mann of
the fire department, one of the
people to witness both
collapses, described shaking
prior to each of them. "Shortly
before the first tower came
down,” he said, “I remember
feeling the ground shaking. I
heard a terrible noise, and then
debris just started flying
everywhere. People started
running." Then, after they had
returned to the area, he said,
“we basically had the same
thing: The ground shook again,
and we heard another terrible
noise and the next thing we knew
the second tower was coming
down."26

Multiple Explosions

The oral histories contain
numerous testimonies with
reports of more than one
explosion. Paramedic Kevin
Darnowski, for example, said: "I
started walking back up towards
Vesey Street. I heard three
explosions, and then we heard
like groaning and grinding, and
tower two started to come down.”27

Gregg Brady, an emergency
medical technician, reported the
same thing about the north
tower, saying: “I heard 3 loud
explosions. I look up and the
north tower is coming down now."28

Somewhat more explosions were
reported by firefighter Thomas
Turilli, who said, referring to
the south tower, that “it almost
sounded like bombs going off,
like boom, boom, boom, like
seven or eight."29

Even more explosions were
reported by Craig Carlsen, who
said that while he and other
firefighters were looking up at
the towers, they “heard
explosions coming from building
two, the south tower. It seemed
like it took forever, but there
were about ten explosions. . . .
We then realized the building
started to come down.”30

“Pops”

As before, “pops” were
reported by some witnesses. “As
we are looking up at the [south
tower],” said firefighter Joseph
Meola, “it looked like the
building was blowing out on all
four sides. We actually heard
the pops. Didn't realize it was
the falling--you know, you heard
the pops of the building. You
thought it was just blowing
out.”31

“Pops” were also reported by
paramedic Daniel Rivera in the
following exchange:

Q. How did you know that it
[the south tower] was coming
down?

A. That noise. It was noise.

Q. What did you hear? What
did you see?

A. It was a frigging noise.
At first I thought it
was---do you ever see
professional demolition
where they set the charges
on certain floors and then
you hear 'Pop, pop, pop,
pop, pop'? That's exactly
what--because I thought it
was that. When I heard that
frigging noise, that's when
I saw the building coming
down.32

Collapse Beginning below
the Strike Zone and Fire

According to the official
account, the “pancaking” of the
floors began when the floors
above the strike zone, where the
supports were weakened by the
impact of the airplanes and the
resulting fires, fell on the
floors below. Some witnesses
reported, however, that the
collapse of the south tower
began lower than the floors that
were struck by the airliner and
hence lower than the fires.

Timothy Burke reported that
while he was watching flames
coming out of the south tower,
“the building popped, lower than
the fire.” He later heard a
rumor that “the aviation fuel
fell into the pit, and whatever
floor it fell on heated up
really bad, and that's why it
popped at that floor.” At the
time, however, he said, “I was
going oh, my god, there is a
secondary device because the way
the building popped. I thought
it was an explosion.”33

This same twofold observation
was made by firefighter Edward
Cachia, who said: “As my officer
and I were looking at the south
tower, it just gave. It actually
gave at a lower floor, not the
floor where the plane hit. . . .
[W]e originally had thought
there was like an internal
detonation, explosives, because
it went in succession, boom,
boom, boom, boom, and then the
tower came down.”34

The Appearance of
Implosion: When a building
close to other buildings is
brought down by controlled
demolition, as mentioned
earlier, it typically implodes
and hence comes straight down
into, or at least close to, its
own footprint, so that it does
not fall over on surrounding
structures.

As we saw above in the
accounts that were previously
available, both police and fire
officials were quoted as saying
that the towers seemed to
implode. This perception was
also stated in the oral history
of Lieutenant James Walsh, who
said: "The [north tower] didn't
fall the way you would think
tall buildings would fall.
Pretty much it looked like it
imploded on itself."35

Flashes: Another
common feature of controlled
demolitions is that people who
are properly situated may see
flashes when the explosives go
off. Assistant Commissioner
Stephen Gregory said: “I thought
. . . before . . . No. 2 came
down, that I saw low-level
flashes. . . . Lieutenant
Evangelista . . . asked me if I
saw low-level flashes in front
of the building, and I agreed
with him because I . . . saw a
flash flash flash . . . [at] the
lower level of the building. You
know like when they demolish a
building, how when they blow up
a building, when it falls down?
That's what I thought I saw.”36

Flashes were reported in the
north tower by Captain Karin
Deshore, who said: “Somewhere
around the middle of the World
Trade Center, there was this
orange and red flash coming out.
Initially it was just one
flash.”37

Demolition Rings: At
this point, Deshore’s account
moved to another standard
phenomenon seen by those who
watch controlled demolitions:
explosion rings, in which a
series of explosions runs
rapidly around a building.
Deshore’s next words were: “Then
this flash just kept popping all
the way around the building and
that building had started to
explode. The popping sound, and
with each popping sound it was
initially an orange and then a
red flash came out of the
building and then it would just
go all around the building on
both sides as far as I could
see. These popping sounds and
the explosions were getting
bigger, going both up and down
and then all around the
building."38

An explosion ring (or belt)
was also described by
firefighter Richard Banaciski.
Speaking of the south tower, he
said: “[T]here was just an
explosion. It seemed like on
television [when] they blow up
these buildings. It seemed like
it was going all the way around
like a belt, all these
explosions.”39

A description of what
appeared to be a ring of
explosions was also given by
Deputy Commissioner Thomas
Fitzpatrick, who said: "We
looked up at the [south tower] .
. . . All we saw was a puff of
smoke coming from about 2 thirds
of the way up . . . . It looked
like sparkling around one
specific layer of the building.
. . . My initial reaction was
that this was exactly the way it
looks when they show you those
implosions on TV."40

Horizontal Ejections:
Another feature of controlled
demolition, at least when quite
powerful explosives are used, is
that things are ejected
horizontally from the floors on
which the explosions occur. Such
ejections were mentioned in the
testimony of Chief Frank
Cruthers above. Similarly,
Captain Jay Swithers said: “I
took a quick glance at the
building and while I didn't see
it falling, I saw a large
section of it blasting out,
which led me to believe it was
just an explosion.”41

Firefighter James Curran
said: “When I got underneath the
north bridge I looked back and .
. . I heard like every floor
went chu-chu-chu. Looked back
and from the pressure everything
was getting blown out of the
floors before it actually
collapsed."42

Battalion Chief Brian Dixon
said: “I was . . . hearing a
noise and looking up. . . .
[T]he lowest floor of fire in
the south tower actually looked
like someone had planted
explosives around it because . .
. everything blew out on the one
floor. I thought, geez, this
looks like an explosion up
there, it blew out."43

These reports by Curran and
Dixon conform to what can be
seen by looking at photographs
and videos of the collapses,
which show that various
materials, including sections of
steel and aluminum, were blown
out hundreds of feet.44
Such powerful ejections of
materials are exactly what would
be expected from explosions
powerful enough to cause such
huge buildings to collapse.

Dust Clouds: The
most visible material ejected
horizontally from buildings
during controlled demolition,
especially buildings with lots
of concrete, is dust, which
forms more or less expansive
dust clouds. Some of the
testimonies about the collapse
of the south tower mention that
it produced an enormous amount
of dust, which formed clouds so
big and thick that they blocked
out all light.

Firefighter Stephen Viola
said: “You heard like loud booms
. . . and then we got covered
with rubble and dust, and I
thought we'd actually fallen
through the floor . . . because
it was so dark you couldn't see
anything."45

Firefighter Angel Rivera
said: “That's when hell came
down. It was like a huge,
enormous explosion. . . . The
wind rushed. . . , all the dust.
. . and everything went dark."46

Lieutenant William Wall said:
“[W]e heard an explosion. We
looked up and the building was
coming down right on top of us.
. . . We ran a little bit and
then we were overtaken by the
cloud."47

Paramedic Louis Cook said
that after the debris started
falling, “everything went black”
and “you couldn't breathe
because [of] all the dust. There
was just an incredible amount of
dust and smoke.” He then found
that there was, “without
exaggerating, a foot and a half
of dust on [his] car.”48

The kind of dust clouds
typically produced during a
controlled demolition can be
seen on videos of the demolition
of Seattle’s Kingdome and the
Reading Grain Facility.49
If these videos are then
compared with photos and videos
of the collapses of the Twin
Towers,50 it can be
seen that the dust clouds in the
latter are even bigger.51

Timed or Synchronized
Explosions: Some people
said that the collapses had the
appearance of timed,
synchronized demolitions.
Battalion Chief Dominick
DeRubbio, speaking of the
collapse of the south tower,
said: “It was weird how it
started to come down. It looked
like it was a timed explosion."52

Firefighter Kenneth Rogers
said: "[T]here was an explosion
in the south tower. . . . I kept
watching. Floor after floor
after floor. One floor under
another after another and when
it hit about the fifth floor, I
figured it was a bomb, because
it looked like a synchronized
deliberate kind of thing. I was
there in '93."53

Debates about Controlled
Demolition

Given so many signs that the
buildings had been brought down
by controlled demolition, we
might expect that debates about
this issue would have taken
place. And they did.

Firefighter Christopher
Fenyo, after describing events
that occurred after the first
collapse, said: “At that point,
a debate began to rage because.
. . many people had felt that
possibly explosives had taken
out 2 World Trade, and officers
were gathering companies
together and the officers were
debating whether or not to go
immediately back in or to see
what was going to happen with 1
World Trade at that point. The
debate ended pretty quickly
because 1 World Trade came
down."54

Firefighter William Reynolds
reported on a conversation he
had with a battalion chief: “I
said, ‘Chief, they're evacuating
the other building; right?’ He
said, ‘No.’ . . . I said, ‘Why
not? They blew up the other
one.’ I thought they blew it up
with a bomb. I said, ‘If they
blew up the one, you know
they're gonna blow up the other
one.’ He said, ‘No, they're
not.’ I said, ‘Well, you gotta
tell them to evacuate it,
because it's gonna fall down and
you gotta get the guys out.’ . .
. He said, ‘I'm just the
Battalion Chief. I can't order
that.’ . . . I said, ‘You got a
fucking radio and you got a
fucking mouth. Use the fucking
things. Empty this fucking
building.’ Again he said, ‘I'm
just a Battalion Chief. I can't
do that.’ . . . Eventually this
other chief came back and said,
‘They are evacuating this
tower.’ . . . And sometime after
that . . . I watched the north
tower fall."55

As both accounts suggest, the
perception that the south tower
had been brought down by
explosives may have resulted in
fewer lives being lost in the
north tower collapse than would
otherwise have been the case.

Why Testimony about
Explosions Has Not Become Public
Knowledge

If so many witnesses reported
effects that seemed to be
produced by explosives, with
some of them explicitly saying
that the collapses appeared to
be cases of controlled
demolition, why is this
testimony not public knowledge?
Part of the answer, as I
mentioned at the outset, is that
the city of New York refused to
release it until forced to do so
by the highest court of the
state of New York

But why did we have to wait
for this court-ordered release
to learn about these
testimonies? Should not they
have been discussed in The
9/11 Commission Report,
which was issued over a year
earlier? This Report, we are
told in the preface, sought “to
provide the fullest possible
account of the events
surrounding 9/11.” Why does it
not include any of the testimony
in the 9/11 oral histories
suggestive of controlled
demolition?

The answer cannot be that the
Commission did not know about
these oral histories. Although
“[t]he city also initially
refused access to the records to
investigators from . . . the
9/11 Commission,” Jim Dwyer of
the New York Times
tells us, it “relented when
legal action was threatened.”56
So the Commission could have
discussed the testimonies about
explosions in the oral
histories. It also, in order to
help educate the public, could
have called some of the
firefighters and medical workers
to repeat their testimony during
one of the Commission’s public
hearings. But it did not.

Why, we may wonder, have the
firefighters and medical workers
not been speaking out? At least
part of the reason may be
suggested by a statement made by
Auxiliary Lieutenant Fireman
Paul Isaac. Having said that
“there were definitely bombs in
those buildings,” Isaac added
that “many other firemen know
there were bombs in the
buildings, but they’re afraid
for their jobs to admit it
because the ‘higher-ups’ forbid
discussion of this fact.”57

Would we not expect, however,
that a few courageous members of
the fire department would have
contacted the 9/11 Commission to
tell their story? Indeed. But
telling their story to the
Commission was no guarantee that
it would find its way into the
final report---as indicated by
the account of one fireman who
made the effort.

Firefighter Louie Cacchioli,
who was quoted earlier,
testified in 2004 to members of
the Commission’s staff. But, he
reported, they were so
unreceptive that he ended up
walking out in anger. “I felt
like I was being put on trial in
a court room,” said Cacchioli.
“They were trying to twist my
words and make the story fit
only what they wanted to hear.
All I wanted to do was tell the
truth and when they wouldn’t let
me do that, I walked out.”58

That Cacchioli’s experience
was not atypical is suggested by
janitor William Rodriguez, whose
testimony was also quoted
earlier. Although Rodriguez was
invited to the White House as a
National Hero for his rescue
efforts on 9/11, he was, he
said, treated quite differently
by the Commission: "I met with
the 9/11 Commission behind
closed doors and they
essentially discounted
everything I said regarding the
use of explosives to bring down
the north tower.”59

When reading The 9/11
Commission Report, one will
not find the name of Cacchioli,
or Rodriguez, or anyone else
reporting explosions in the
towers. It would appear that the
Commission deliberately withheld
this information, as it
apparently did with regard to
Able Danger60 and
many other things that should
have been included in “the
fullest possible account of the
events surrounding 9/11.”61

The definitive report about
the collapse of the towers was
to have been provided by the
National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST). According
to Rodriguez, however, this
investigative body was equally
uninterested in his testimony:
“I contacted NIST . . . four
times without a response.
Finally, [at a public hearing] I
asked them before they came up
with their conclusion . . . if
they ever considered my
statements or the statements of
any of the other survivors who
heard the explosions. They just
stared at me with blank faces.”62

In light of this report of
NIST’s response, it is not
surprising to find that its
final report, which in the
course of supporting the
official story about the
collapses ignores many vital
issues,63 makes no
mention of reports of explosions
and other phenomena suggestive
of controlled demolition.

Conclusion

It is sometimes said that the
mandate of an official
commission is, by definition, to
support the official story.
Insofar as that is true, it is
not surprising that neither NIST
nor the 9/11 Commission saw fit
to discuss testimony suggestive
of explosions in the Twin
Towers, since this testimony is
in strong tension with the
official story.

At least most of those who
offered this testimony did not,
to be sure, mean to challenge
the most important element in
the official story about 9/11,
which is that the attacks were
entirely the work of foreign
terrorists. For example,
firefighter Timothy Julian,
after saying that he “thought it
was an explosion,” added: “I
thought maybe there was a bomb
on the plane, but delayed type
of thing, you know secondary
device.”64 Assistant
Commissioner James Drury said:
“I thought the terrorists
planted explosives somewhere in
the building.”65

The problem, however, is that
a bomb delivered by a plane, or
even a few explosives planted
“somewhere in the building,”
would not explain the many
phenomena suggestive of
controlled demolition, such as
explosion rings and other
features indicating that the
explosions were “synchronized”
and otherwise “timed.” As Mark
Loizeaux, the head of Controlled
Demolition, Inc., has explained,
“to bring [a building] down as
we want, so no one or no other
structure is harmed,” the
demolition must be “completely
planned.” One needs “the right
explosive [and] the right
pattern of laying the charges.”66

The 9/11 oral histories,
therefore, create a difficult
question for those who defend
the official story: How could
al-Qaeda terrorists have gotten
access to the Twin Towers for
all the hours required to place
all the explosives needed to
bring down buildings of that
size? It is primarily because
they force this question that
the testimony about explosions
in the towers is itself
explosive.

Notes

Jim Dwyer, "City to
Release Thousands of Oral
Histories of 9/11 Today,"
New York Times, August
12, 2005. As Dwyer
explained, the oral
histories "were originally
gathered on the order of
Thomas Von Essen, the city
fire commissioner on Sept.
11, who said he wanted to
preserve those accounts
before they became reshaped
by a collective memory."

Jim Dwyer, "Vast Archive
Yields New View of 9/11,"
New York Times, August
13, 2005.

Greg Szymanski, "NY
Fireman Lou Cacchioli Upset
that 9/11 Commission 'Tried
to Twist My Words,’" Arctic
Beacon.com, July 19, 2005.
Although the oral histories
that were released on August
12 did not include one from
Cacchioli, the fact that he
was on duty is confirmed in
the oral history of Thomas
Turilli, page 4.

Oral History of John
Sudnik, 4 (for where to find
the 9/11 oral histories of
the FDNY, see note 3,
above).

Oral History of Timothy
Julian, 10.

Oral History of Michael
Ober, 4.

Oral History of Frank
Cruthers, 4.

Oral History of Lonnie
Penn, 5.

Oral History of Paul
Curran, 11.

Oral History of Bradley
Mann, 5-7.

Oral History of Kevin
Darnowski, 8.

Oral History of Gregg
Brady, 7.

Oral History of Thomas
Turilli, 4.

Oral History of Craig
Carlsen, 5-6.

Oral History of Joseph
Meola, 5.

Oral History of Daniel
Rivera, 9.

Oral History of Timothy
Burke, 8-9.

Oral History of Edward
Cachia, 5.

Oral History of James
Walsh, 15.

Oral History of Stephen
Gregory, 14-16.

Oral History of Karin
Deshore, 15.

Ibid.

Oral History of Richard
Banaciski, 3-4.

Oral History of Thomas
Fitzpatrick, 13-14.

Oral history of Jay
Swithers, 5.

Oral History of James
Curran, 10-11.

Oral History of Brian
Dixon, 15. Like many others,
Dixon indicated that he
later came to accept the
official interpretation,
adding: "Then I guess in
some sense of time we looked
at it and realized, no,
actually it just collapsed.
That's what blew out the
windows, not that there was
an explosion there but that
windows blew out."

See the writings of
Hufschmid, Hoffman, and King
mentioned in note 44.

For a calculation of the
energy required simply for
the expansion of one of the
resulting dust clouds, see
Jim Hoffman, "The North
Tower's Dust Cloud" (http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/volume.html).
Hoffman concludes that
gravitational energy would
have been far from
sufficient.

Oral History of Dominick
DeRubbio, 5. DeRubbio, at
least professing to accept
the official interpretation,
added, "but I guess it was
just the floors starting to
pancake one on top of the
other."

See Kevin Ryan,
"Propping Up the War on
Terror: Lies about the WTC
by NIST and Underwriters
Laboratories," in David Ray
Griffin and Peter Dale
Scott, eds., 9/11 and
the American Empire:
Intellectuals Speak Out
(Northampton, Mass.:
Interlink Books, Fall 2006),
and Jim Hoffman, "Building a
Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year
$20,000,000 Cover-Up of the
Crime of the Century" (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html).

Oral History of Timothy
Julian, 10.

Oral History of James
Drury, 12.

Liz Else, "Baltimore
Blasters," New Scientist
183/2457 (July 24, 2004), 48
(http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324575.700).
Surprisingly, after
explaining how precisely
explosives must be set to
ensure that a building comes
straight down, Loizeaux said
that upon seeing the fires
in the Twin Towers, he knew
that they were "going to
pancake down, almost
vertically. It was the only
way they could fail. It was
inevitable." Given the fact
that fire had never before
caused tall steel-frame
buildings to collapse, let
alone in a way that
perfectly mimicked
controlled demolition,
Loizeaux's statement was
doubly puzzling. His
company, incidentally, was
hired to do the clean-up of
the WTC site after 9/11.

I could not have written
this essay without the
amazingly generous help of
Matthew Everett, who located
and passed on to me most of
the statements in the 9/11
oral histories quoted
herein.

______________________________

David Ray Griffin is
professor emeritus of philosophy
of religion and theology at the
Claremont School of Theology and
Claremont Graduate University,
where he taught 31 years. He has
published some 30 books,
including The New Pearl
Harbor: Disturbing Questions
about the Bush Administration
and 9/11 (Interlink Books,
2004) and The 9/11
Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions (Interlink
Books, 2005).

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